Sagar

I don’t know what to term this blog entry as. This might seem to an obituary. But this is a tribute. A tribute to a fighter. A person, who was well aware of his impending death, about a year and a half before he took his last breath.
I first met Sagar at the university, where I went for my post-graduate studies. Infact, he was the one, who had introduced himself to me. The main reason he wanted to meet me was the fact that he had heard about a Bengali “who spoke strange Bengali” and wanted to confirm whether it was me.
Sagar was from Bangladesh. Or that was what I had heard of him in my initial days at the university. His parents stayed in Bangladesh and he would go to Bangladesh during his vacations. Later on, as relations between the two of us improved, I also asked him about his trips to Bangladesh. It was around this time, that the train service between India and Bangladesh was initiated, though, it was of little help for him. But I never came to know, how he crossed the border during the vacations, for he did not possess a passport. He was from a family, which was in no way well-to-do. He did have some relatives staying on the Indian side of Bengal, but I didn’t know much about them. To be very honest, we were not the best of friends, and the fact that student politics at the university did not allow you to trust anyone in a jiffy, further fuelled our distance. But I did see him going outside the campus every evening to give tuitions to school students staying around the campus, while we would go for our rounds of cha and cigarette. This was what made me respect him. He was ready to fight all odds to complete his studies.
My relations with him were seldom cordial. Of course, I did try to make amends later on during my stay at the university, I must admit, he was one of the few persons, whom I have called a mother fucker. He is no more there to accept my apology, but I do wish I could tell him that I am sorry for that. However my initiative at cooling things down between us did work and we became good acquaintances, if not good friends .during the second year of my M.Sc.
At around the same time that I cleared my MBA entrance, he got placed in a leading bank. I still remember the date. It was the 18th of February 2008. That was the day, I was leaving for Anand for my interview.
I had to leave the university early, on account of my classes in MBA beginning early, but, when I went back for my thesis viva, I made a point to meet him. I wanted to know, where he had been given a posting and also wanted him to know that I was so happy at his success. But fate had something else in store for him. I was told that he had been rejected at the medicals because he had leukaemia. My limited knowledge of biology suggested that it was something to do with blood cancer. However, everything was forgotten after my thesis viva was over and I officially became an M.Sc. in agricultural sciences.
He passed away last week in Mumbai. It was blood cancer. The news took me back to that day at the university, when he told me about his medicals at the bank. And that fateful Saturday in Mumbai, marked he end of the road for a “struggler”, who had struggled all his life to make a good life for himself. And quite fittingly, he breathed his last in a place, where people from all around the country land up to make a good life. The city of “strugglers”, Mumbai.